Let people save face. Handing someone a way out is a quiet kind of strength.

When someone is clearly wrong, you can close every exit and make them admit it. That works, and it buys you a person who will remember being cornered far longer than the point you made. Leaving a door open costs you a moment of being obviously right. What comes back is somebody able to change their mind without paying for it in public.

Use a phrase that lets them move: it is easy to read it that way, or I might have explained it badly. You are not lying. You are making the retreat walkable.